Summary: God has devised a way to let you know if he is No. 1 and you trust him to meet your every need and it is called the tithe.

Paul Harvey told of the woman a few years ago that had a butterball turkey she had had in her freezer for 23 years. She called Butterball Company to ask them about whether the turkey would be all right to eat. The company said we think it would be all right if the freezer was okay but the turkey may have lost a lot of its flavor. She said, I thought that might be the case so I will just give it to the church for Thanksgiving.

So many times we are just like the woman, we give God our leftovers. We give God our turkeys. God doesn’t need our turkeys: he needs our best.

Did you know all through the Bible God has devised a way that we can know if he is No. 1 in our lives? We can say he is No. 1, but is he No. 1? We can say we trust him to meet our every need but do we really trust him to meet our every need? Listen folks, God has devised a way to let you know if he is No. 1 and you trust him to meet your every need and it is called the tithe.

Now for our first point, I want to talk to you about THE PURPOSE OF THE TITHE.

In the book of Deuteronomy when the Lord spoke to Moses the Lord said, “the purpose of tithing is to teach you to trust God.” It is the purpose of the tithe to teach you faith in trusting God. To trust God to provide you with all your needs.

Also, we read in Proverbs 3: 9 -- 10, “honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase: so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shell burst out with new wine.”

Now connected to these verses you read up in the verses prior to these, lean not upon your own understanding. Now that verse is connected to these verses because man’s understanding is for an increase, keep it all. That is the reason God says don’t lean on your own understanding. Man’s understanding is I will need not own needs. I will give what is left over.

Now listen folks because we have talked of this verse in Hebrews before. The tithe is to teach us faith and Hebrews tells us without faith, it is impossible to please God.

Tithing has a purpose and it is to teach us faith in God. I find it hard to believe a person to trust God to take him to heaven and not trust him with the tithe.

There is not only the purpose of the tithe but also THE PATTERN OF THE TITHE.

When we talk of the pattern of the tithe, we have the best pattern any man can ever get and it is God who sets the pattern. The Bible says God is the giver of all good gifts. In John 3: 16, the Bible teaches us that God gave his only be gotten Son. God himself gave the first fruits. In first Corinthians 15: 20, Paul said, “but now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” God gave the first fruits.

Now what does that mean? Jesus rose from the dead and became the first fruits of the resurrection. That means there is more resurrection to come. That means because Jesus was raised from the dead, we will be raised from the dead as being believers. That means that heaven is going to be our home. You see, God doesn’t ask us to do anything he would not do himself. He has already given his best. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ Jesus died that we might live. We have the pattern of giving our substance and ourselves.